The Sisters

Author's Note :

This is my entry for the Halloween 2026 contest. It's also my tribute to one of the most tragic and unfairly vilified women in all mythology.

THE SISTERS

It was only when Suzanna returned home from work that she realised that the house across the ginnel had been taken.

In the two years since Suzanna had moved in, the house across the ginnel had remained empty. She had long since grown to like it that way, since it gave her the freedom to stand naked at her bedroom window at dawn and let the rising sun wash over her breasts. She'd begun to hope it would remain vacant forever.

But tonight she saw the lights as soon as she turned the corner from High Street; lights at both the ground floor and upstairs, glowing merrily behind amber curtains. She sighed with the annoyance one feels at losing something that was a convenience taken for granted.

Wearily, she put her bags of groceries down on her doorstep and fumbled in her pocket for her key. And then she realised that someone was watching her.

It was just a glimpse: a woman standing in the upstairs window of the house across the ginnel. Suzanna had an impression of a slim body and dark hair hanging in multiple thin braids. Then the curtain fell back into place and there was nothing to see anymore.

Perhaps the woman had been disappointed, Suzanna thought. She had no illusions about her own attractiveness; smallish, slightly plump, with a perpetually harried expression in her grey eyes, and a mouth that had forgotten how to laugh. With an inward shrug, she opened the door.

Later, as she stood in her bedroom preparing to undress for bed, she reminded herself to close the curtains, something she never normally did except in winter. And when she crossed to the window, there was the woman again, standing at the window opposite, looking out into the night.

Suzanna could see her more clearly now, across the ginnel: tall, olive-skinned, her hair pulled back under some kind of cap, dressed in something that looked like a robe and shimmered in the light. The woman noticed her, smiled and raised a hand in greeting.

The smile rocked Suzanna back on her heels. Suddenly the woman was beautiful. She was more beautiful than anyone Suzanna had ever known.

Suzanna smiled weakly back. And then there were two women in the window across the way.

They could be sisters, Suzanna thought. The second woman was as tall and slim as the first, and wore something as shimmering. Her hair was covered by a cloth wound around her head like a turban. She said something to the first woman and turned to look at Suzanna. Then she smiled, too, and was at once quite as beautiful. Suzanna's heart raced just from the sight of them.

I must look like an idiot, she thought then, standing there gawping at them across the ginnel. They must think I'm terribly rude. Wonderful, Suzanna, you really know how to make friends. She blushed and quickly pulled the curtains closed.

_____________________________________________

Suzanna woke with the closed curtains reminding her that her days of greeting the rising sun naked at the window were over. It was going to be a bad day at work, too, an overdue project that wasn't her fault but which would be pinned on her for certain, and meetings with clients she'd dreaded all week.

She took a deep breath, forced herself to get out of bed, and tried not to think. Instead her mind insisted on replaying the memory of the two ravishing women in the window across the ginnel. So near, and so far away.

She saw them as she was locking her front door. They were standing in their little garden, talking. In the morning light they looked, if anything, even more beautiful. They still wore shimmering robes that left their arms bare. Both had their hair covered. They saw her looking and smiled.

"Hello," one called. Her voice was like honey-mead; it sent a thrill down to Suzanna's toes. She tried to reply, but it was as though her voice had seized up. She only managed a nod and then scurried away.

Suzanna stopped at the corner café for her usual morning cuppa. "New people next door," Doris said, putting the Earl Grey and egg sandwich down before her.

"I saw." Suzanna felt her face grow unaccountably hot.

Doris grinned. "Fancy them, do you, then?"

"Give over." Suzanna nibbled at her sandwich. She had no appetite. "Sisters, aren't they?"

Doris nodded. "Called Gordon, I heard."

"Gordon." She'd thought they were foreigners from their appearance. Her last girlfriend had been Lebanese.

She stared down into her tea and remembered once again that she hadn't been in a relationship in years.

_____________________________________________

Days passed.

Every evening when Suzanna would go up to her bedroom, the window across the ginnel would be open and the curtain drawn back. Usually one or other sister would appear, if only briefly. Sometimes both would. If they saw her looking - and they always did, sooner or later - they would smile and wave.

Suzanna had never been able to summon the courage to wave back.

She'd found herself looking for reasons to be in her bedroom once she'd finished with supper, instead of turning on the telly. She told herself it was nothing, and worried that it wasn't. She told herself that it was absurd to think that she was waiting to catch a glimpse of them. And yet when she saw them, even if for a moment through the window of the High Street baker's shop or the greengrocer's, she couldn't look away.

I'm in a rut, she told herself. Wake to my drawn curtains, listen to Doris natter on while I chew at a sandwich, take the Number Seventeen bus to the office, where I bear the weight of everyone else's incompetence on my shoulders. Come back, change, make supper, eat, and then go up and try to act as though I'm just standing around my bedroom while I wait for a glimpse of one of them.

It wasn't healthy, but then nothing in her life was healthy. Not anymore.

Perhaps she should just go over and introduce herself. But the very idea of doing something so bold made her mouth go dry.

And the week dragged on.

_____________________________________________

"Good evening." The honey-mead voice was unmistakable.

Suzanna turned, key in hand. Both sisters stood looking at her over the gate.

She managed to make her mouth work. "Good evening," she said.

"We'd like to invite you for our house-warming." The first sister's smile was dazzling. "You look... lonely."

Suzanna opened her mouth to reply. Nothing came out.

"We aren't on any schedule," the other sister added. "You could come along with us right away." She paused, raising one impossibly graceful eyebrow. "If you want to, of course."

Suzanna thought of demurring, but the day at the office had gone even worse than her worst expectations. Being in congenial company suddenly seemed what she needed.

And, really, what was wrong with being in the company of a couple of women so beautiful and polite, so welcoming?

Why, nothing. She suddenly felt free.

"I'd love to," she replied.

_____________________________________________

"Please sit down," the first sister said, ushering her to a chair. They still had their hair covered. Their robes shimmered hypnotically as they moved. Their arms were bare and beautiful.

"Welcome to our home," the other sister added.

Suzanna sat. The furnishings looked as exotic as the sisters themselves; tall ornamented vases at the corners, hangings on the walls with embroidered cities of columned buildings. It was like a museum, only lived in and without the cold impersonality of museums. She caught herself staring.

One of the sisters handed her an ornamented goblet. "Please," she said, smiling.

The wine was white and had a strange, crisp taste. "What is it?"

"Retsina." The sisters sipped at their own goblets. "Resinated Greek wine. Do you like it?"

"It's... lovely." It was warm in her stomach, and spread like liquid fire along her nerves. You're lovely, she wanted to say. I wish I could taste you.

"Tell us about yourself," the second sister said. She leant towards Suzanna. The neckline of her robe fell partly open. Suzanna tried desperately not to stare.

"Nothing to tell," she began to say, but then something - it could have been the wine, it must have been the wine - took over, and the words began spilling out of her. The string of failed relationships, the job she hated, everything. To her own horror, she found her mouth going on and on, until she was telling them of how she waited in the evenings to watch them at their window.

My days now revolve around you, she thought. I can't even sleep until I've seen you. When I'm being slagged off at the office, I try to comfort myself with the thought that in a few hours I'll be looking at you.

"We did think you were terribly lonely," the first sister said, pouring Suzanna more wine. She looked at the other sister. "We know how that feels."

"So well," the second sister agreed.

I love you, Suzanna thought. I don't even know anything about you, where you're from, what you do, even your first names. But I love you.

Had she said it aloud? The sisters exchanged glances. One of them stood up and calmly stripped off her shimmering robe. A moment later, the other did too. The lamplight painted their naked bodies in amber light and shadow.

Suzanna stared at them and felt her heart race until she thought it was about to burst.

The second sister kissed her own finger and then gently pressed it to Suzanna's lips. "Come upstairs, darling," she said, taking one of Suzanna's hands.

"Yes, come upstairs," the first sister said, taking the other.

"But only if you want to," the other sister added.

"I want to," Suzanna said, and it was true.

The sisters drifted towards the stairs, and she drifted with them.

_____________________________________________

"So you're Greek?" Suzanna lay naked on the huge bed, still tingling from the starbursts of ecstasy coursing through her body. The two sisters lay on either side, their warmth enveloping her.

"Yes." The first sister twirled her fingertip around Suzanna's nipple. The other's fingers slipped lusciously up and down Suzanna's cleft. "We are."

Both still wore their hair coverings. Suzanna reached up to touch one.

"No," the sister said, moving her head back sharply. "Don't."

"Sorry." Suzanna bit her lip. Perhaps it was a religious thing. "I don't even know your names."

"Oh, I'm Euryale. And she's Stheno."

Suzanna frowned slightly. The names sounded vaguely familiar. Where had she come across those names before? She felt a faint, unaccountable chill. "Euryale and Stheno Gordon?"

"Gordon?" The sisters shared a look across her breasts. "No, darling," Stheno said, smiling ever so slightly.

"Not Gordon." Euryale reached for her hair covering and tucked it in tighter.

"We had a sister called Medusa," she said.